captain like an unruly marionette. Harris
appeared to threaten him. What he said we could not hear for the
deep-drawn blast and the high staccato crackle of the blazing hold. But
we saw the staggering steward offering him a drink; saw the glass flung
next instant in the captain's face, the blood running, a pistol drawn,
fired without effect, and snatched away by the drunken mutineer. Next
instant a smooth black cane was raining blow after blow on the man's
head. He dropped; the blows fell thick and heavy as before. He lay
wriggling; the Portuguese struck and struck until he lay quite still;
then we saw Joaquin Santos kneel, and rub his stick carefully on the
still thing's clothes, as a man might wipe his boots.

Curses burst from our throats; yet the fellow deserved to die. Nor, as I
say, had we time to waste two thoughts upon any one incident. This
last had begun and ended in the same minute; in another we were at the
starboard gangway, tumbling helter-skelter aboard the lowered long-boat.

She lay safely on the water: how we thanked our gods for that! Lower and
lower sank her gunwale as we dropped aboard her, with no more care than
the Gadarene swine whose fate we courted. Discipline, order, method,
common care, we brought none of these things with us from our floating
furnace; but we fought to be first over the bulwarks, and in the bottom
of the long-boat we fought again.

And yet she held us all! All, that is, but a terror-stricken few, who
lay along the jibboom like flies upon a stick: all but two or three more
whom we left fatally hesitating in the forechains: all but the selfish
savages who had been the first to perish in the pinnace, and one
distracted couple who had thrown their children into the kindly ocean,
and jumped in after them out of their torment, locked for ever in each
other's arms.

Yes! I saw more things on that starry night, by that blood-red glare,
than I have told you in their order, and more things than I shall tell
you now. Blind would I gladly be for my few remaining years, if that
night's horrors could be washed from these eyes for ever. I have said so
much, however, that in common candor I must say one thing more. I have
spoken of selfish savages. God help me and forgive me! For by this time
I was one myself.

In the long-boat we cannot have been less than thirty; the exact number
no man will ever know. But we shoved off without mischance; the chief
mate had the tiller; the third mate